


Ian's Gamble

by sorchafyre



Category: National Treasure series (movie)
Genre: Gen, cypher - Freeform, historical hunt, puzzle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 18:45:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorchafyre/pseuds/sorchafyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A current letter wrapped around slices of Ben and Ian's past,including their first hunt, and a puzzle for the reader to solve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ian's Gamble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starfishchick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starfishchick/gifts).



> Thanks to Bardicside, the treasure hunt master, for her clues and items.

_Ben,_

 

_I'll bet you didn't expect to hear from me- you'll recognize my handwriting, even if the penitentiary's return address didn't tip you off. Of course, I always was a gambling man, even from the very start._

 

_******************_

The Benefactor's Gala was a glittering, supremely boring affair. Ian Howe always privately suspected it was the highlight of many of the academic attendee's year- a chance to pontificate at the rich and powerful. "I've always thought the application of a little judicious research would prove that Washington had brokered a secret deal with France. An application of grant money would..." Dr. Foster, Ian's current companion, stopped his sentence dead. "I don't believe it. The **nerve** of some people." Ian, who had only been paying light attention, looked at him with sudden interest.

 

"Whatever do you mean?" he asked.

 

"Gates. I can't believe that two-bit excuse for a historian had the gall to show up here." Dr. Foster's usually pontificating tones dipped into uncharacteristic venom- which was the most interesting thing Ian had heard all night. He followed Dr. Foster's gaze to an unobtrusive man, standing near the buffet. There was nothing particularly attractive or significant about the man that Ian could see.

 

Until he turned around to look over the crowd and Ian saw his eyes. There was something so open in his expression, something guileless; Ian felt he could look all the way through him right down to the bottom of his soul. Now the man was _fascinating_.

 

"Gates?" Ian questioned. "I don't think I've heard the name.

 

"You wouldn't have," Dr. Foster replied. "No legitimate historian pays Ben Gates any attention. He's nothing but a treasure hunter," he continued disgustedly.

 

Irresistible indeed. "Send a grant proposal to my office," Ian said, disengaging from the conversation. "I'll definitely have it considered." He had no intention of supporting it of course, but it hardly took any of Ian's skills to identify the man's heavy-handed insinuations. It was forgotten by the time he had covered half the distance to the buffet.

 

Ian was going to get more information on this dark-horse who seemed to hold keys to several different sorts of his interests. Convergence or coincidence, Ian was about to lay stakes in one of the biggest gambles of his life.

 

*******************

_We're not as different as you'd like to think, Ben. After all, we both know what it is to be obsessed with something. Pity it couldn't have been the same thing, you have to admit we made an amazing team. Enough time in here changes the way you think. Not that I've had any great revelations or that I'm a changed man as they say, but there are some things I would have done differently. _

 

_*******************_

"What's this?" Ben Gates looked up from his research notebook at the dull thud of a statue being set down on the table in front of him.

 

"That's what we're going to find out," Ian told him with an anticipatory grin. "It was in with some Egyptian artifacts but it clearly didn't fit." His smile broadened as he picked up the piece. "Look at this." The piece was of two men, one wearing Romanesque armor the other outfitted in more simplistic garb of the same period. Ben started when Ian grabbed his hand, and as he looked up to meet Ian's eyes there was that small moment that always happened, as if Ian could see every thought in his head. With a little smile that was more amused than apologetic, Ian ran Ben's index finger along the bottom of the statue so that he could feel the almost unnoticed lines carved into the base.

 

"A maker's mark?" Ben questioned as Ian let go and offered the statue to him upside-down.

 

"That's what I thought at first," Ian replied as Ben picked up a magnifying glass to see the small letters.

 

1SML20

WEBSTER 1833

 

"Webster?" Ben started pacing, holding the statue tightly. "Webster? Noah Webster? He died in 1843... what does a lexicographer have to do with a Roman statue? 1833... 1833... Wait." Ben turned to Ian and met his eyes again. "Best known for his dictionary, he also revised the King James Version of the Bible..." Ben was at the table again, head bent over the statue as he once more studied the inscription. "Samuel! First Samuel, Chapter 20. It's got to be."

 

Ian was already on his laptop. He'd known Ben Gates couldn't resist. He would have bet on it.

 

*********************

_Take the way things turned out between us. After all the times I beat you at poker, all the times I could read you like a book, it turns out you won the game after all. Considering it was your father who pulled the bluff on me though, I'm not sure it counts._

 

_********************_

 

"Baltic Brown."

 

Ben looked over from the table where he was eating when had Ian slipped into the room. "What?"

 

"I've got the lab results back. The statue is granite, not marble, and a specific type of granite at that, known as Baltic Brown. It's only mined in Ylamaa, Finland." Ian's blue eyes were glowing with the excitement mirrored in Ben's dark ones.

 

"Finland?" Ben stood but before he could say anything else, Ian spoke again.

 

"Pack light, Ben. We're leaving tomorrow."

 

There was no treasure in Finland, but there were clues. More clues, in handful of objects- a letter and cross in a wooden box and an unmistakable symbol of the Templar Knights.

 

It was taking a lot longer than Ian had hoped to play out this hand, but when he looked into Ben Gate's eyes he was still convinced he'd picked a winner.

 

*****************

 

_Remember the statue, Ben, the first hunt we ever went on together? Even back then I could see your passion, knew the way your mind worked. Something was there I recognized. The fire that burned in you was the same as mine, the unquenching need to win at our self-imposed games, over a puzzle or another person, over circumstances or society._

 

_*****************_

 

"What secrets do you hold, I wonder?" The words, although spoken softly, filtered into the workroom Ben had set up. It was a Sunday morning and he had taken the opportunity to spread out the pieces he and Ian had collected in Finland on his large, solid wooden table. Normally they were kept in a safety deposit box, but Ian had retrieved them the day before. He was due to come by later that afternoon, so that they could work together, but Ben couldn't just-- wait.

 

Ben ran one fingertip down the back of the marble figure with a sense of satisfaction. David and Jonathan, one small, personal part of this greater mystery solved.  Ben had the sense that there was more to this than they had so far, and he looked forward to reaching their next destination.

 

_Correct_ destination, he amended. Opening up the spiral-bound notebook he carried to jot down the clues for this leg of the journey, Ben removed the folded world map Ian had given him, and studied it carefully. Marking one or two spots in his mind, he lay it on the table and once again picked up his book of personal notes. With careful fingers he opened the original letter they had found tucked beneath the wooden cross in a box and began copying the text into his book.

 

As Ben worked, a faint frown creased his forehead. Something. There was something...

 

Although he knew it was a convention of the Middle English the letter was written in, Ben took all of the capital letters and lined them up on a blank page before he had even finished copying the text. Nothing, it was gibberish. He tried the first letters of each sentence and once again came up blank. Still, he began to feel a thread of excitement, a sense that there was something more here, something hidden. He turned back to copying the letter.

 

_...I am not so blind that I cannot see the darkness as well as the Light in the one God, though if certain eyes were to see this ink, I would surely be put to death for daring to pen such a thing._ "Wait... **what**? WHAT? Darkness in God, written by a Templar Knight?" Ben began to pace as he thought out loud. That was a red flag of such proportions it may as well have been written in day-glow. "And again the mention of light, along with... does ink have anything... maybe the darkness is a clue itself..."

 

Ben's eyes jumped to the cross that had been found with the letter. Cedar wood and pewter. "Cedar was associated with Solomon's temple. A treatment for leprosy. Fragrant." When Ben had earlier tried to find the symbolism of pewter in a search, he had been inundated with so many extraneous figurine results he finally closed the browser with irritation. He had to get someone to help him with all this annoying research. Ian couldn't be around all the time and Shaw was like the man's shadow, utterly loyal to Ian alone. He had, after all, been with him longer than Ben had.

 

Darkness? Pewter was a dark metal. He could explore the ink idea, or the pewter first. As the former would involve less-- invasive research, Ben took the original letter to the stove and turned it on. He held the material by the edges in both hands over the resultant heat. Nothing. Carefully he raised the sheet and turned it over. Ben's eyes widened as he saw a dark cross in the upper right hand corner of the page that the heat had revealed.

 

The cross! Ben had a feeling about the cross and this seemed to confirm that intuition. In a state of barely-suppressed excitement, he returned to the table, carefully laying the document down. Closing his eyes, Ben ran his fingers over the wood carefully and slowly, to see if any anomalies were apparent to his questing fingertips. Nothing presented itself, so he proceeded to a visual examination of the object. The wood was a little darker in one spot, there was an interesting grouping of whorls in another area, but all leads proved futile to further searching. Finally, as he had half-expected, there was nothing left but the pewter disc in the center of the cross. Taking a sharp, thin knife from the butcher block on the counter, Ben paused to lean back against the counter and regard the objects on the table once more.

 

Could Ben do as he wished with these things? Did he have a moral obligation to the public, or society, or some other diffuse intellectual concept to preserve the items as found? Would the world really be poorer if he treated them as normal clues rather than sacred objects? Set against that was the thrill of the hunt that he could almost taste, the anticipation of victory when another clue was revealed, another surmise proved correct, another step along the path laid out so long ago, the lust of the intellect that was a lure he could rarely resist. Besides, who was to say that this would not lead to a cache of things much greater in value?

 

Returning to the table, Ben carefully pried out the pewter disc. For all his careful rationalizing, the action yielded nothing in the way of clues; there was nothing on the back, no hidden trigger beneath, nothing in the hollow or the join of wood where it had lain. Irritated, Ben left the dark silver circle laying on the cross and sat back in his chair to stare at the objects.

 

Ben returned to his original line of thinking and reviewed all he knew about invisible inks and secret writing. That cross appearing in the heat had to mean **something**.

 

He quickly categorized invisible ink into three categories for himself; inks that developed with heat, ultraviolet-visible ink and chemically reacting ink.

 

Heat. If there had been anything else on the page written in this type of ink, it would have shown up with the original symbol, therefore this line was a dead-end. Ultraviolet reactive he looked at for a few minutes, but soon abandoned it since there were no black lights or other ultraviolet light bulbs available in the time period in which it was written. Therefore, Ben focused his effort on chemically-reactive inks.

 

"Cabbage water. Iodine. Silver nitrate." Ben's voice trailed behind him as he paced, cataloging all the substances he could remember. The only thing that had a chance of not damaging the letter itself was ammonia fumes. Frustrated, Ben continued his circle of the room. Although he had made peace with the fact that these artifacts were not _sacred_, destroying the letter was crossing a line he wouldn't cross. Partially it **was** a reverence for the antiquity of the items and partially it was the fact that this would be irrevocable- no second chances or going back.

 

Walking into the kitchen, Ben retrieved the letter and read it again carefully. Plenty of words seemed out of place to his modern sensibility, but nothing that looked like a key to development... what chemicals were realistic for men of that time period to have obtained? Wait, that may be the tack he needed to take, why hadn't he thought of that earlier?

 

"Ultraviolet. Hold on. Sunlight contains ultraviolet rays... and the letter was buried in a box, in a cave, in the dark." Ben's excitement grew as he thought out loud. He could test this. He could **test** for this one, relatively simply.

 

Taking the letter to the window, Ben opened it, placing the page face-down in the resulting direct light. He didn't know how long he would have to wait, and so decided to absent himself from the room for several hours.

 

An excruciating several hours.

 

By the time Ian and Shaw arrived, Ben was laughing. He held out the letter, dark brown lines clearly showing.

> In the Holy City
> 
> When the Lion's Fire
> 
> Blazes on the Western Wall
> 
> You will find the Path
> 
> T o Our Resting Place. 

 

"Jereuselum. It's in Egypt, Ian."

 

*******************

 

_Can you believe I'd like to see you again? Even if I know it can never be the same between us, that we can never go back to the way it was, I'd still like to talk, maybe reminisce about old times. Now that you've won, that you've got everything you wanted, I'm betting you still can't resist the call of a puzzle._

 

_*******************_

 

It wasn't the grand treasure of the Templars, the hidden mother lode of riches, that they found hidden in Egypt, but there was a respectable cache of items beneath the Western Wall in Jereuselem.

 

"Yes," Ben crowed, letting a sparkling fall of gems sift through his fingers. "I was right!" Shaw laughed from the other side of the rough-hewn room, a golden statue in his hand. "I knew it had to be here." He looked up into Ian's intense gaze and then quickly down. How did the man always seem to read him with just one, searching look and would it always feel like he was on the edge of something dangerous when it happened? "Just wait until they go on display, we'll be heroes."

 

There was a small sound from Shaw but Ian started talking before Ben could look.

 

"We could do that," he said thoughtfully. "That would certainly do something towards vindicating your name. Or," he continued, his voice dropping into a low murmur as he put his hand on Ben's wrist, "we could use them to get what you really want. I know of a place where we can get the proper value for these." Ben looked up, about to protest, when Ian's eyes stopped him.

 

"Charlotte, Ben. We can use these things that **you** found to locate Charlotte. We can hire that Riley fellow we've been talking about to help you."

 

Ben wavered. Ian felt it, continued on, raising the bet, finessing Ben with his one irresistible hook. "I'm not backing out, Ben, but it takes money to run a search operation. Charlotte is out there, you know it and I know it. Imagine the Templar's treasure, Ben. Imagine what it would mean to your family, to finally get the respect they deserve."

 

Reluctantly, Ben nodded, silent.

 

"I believe in you, Ben. I believe that it's out there and that you'll be the one to find it." Ian's voice was low now, intimate and fierce. "I'm betting everything I have on it."

 

Suddenly, Ian let go of Ben and turned to Shaw, his voice returning to normal. "Alright, he said, rubbing his hands together briskly, "Let's get this packed up for storage. We've got a plane to catch."

 

*******************

_Therefore, I've hidden a simple code in this letter, the name of a place. Every month for a year after my release, I'll be there on the first day, from noon to twelve thirty. Really, how can you resist?_

 

_Sincerely,_

 

_Ian_


End file.
